Josh Davis: a story of serendipity and savvy

Now everybody was calling. “An outrageous number of schools,” Davis says.

How outrageous? Twenty? Thirty? Forty? More?

“Had to be at least 50,” he says.

One call came on an April afternoon while he was sitting in his bedroom. It was from Dutcher, from San Diego State. Davis had seen the Aztecs play once on TV, a 79-65 loss to North Carolina State in the NCAA Tournament that he watched out of homage to his old teammates. He knew about Kawhi Leonard. He had heard of Coach Fisher and the Fab Five. And that was about it.

Dutcher had five minutes.

“It’s just a tricky thing with recruiting,” Davis says. “A lot of the different coaches say a lot of different things, but I could tell from my first conversation with him that he was really honest. I just had a good feeling that he was true to me.”

A door cracked open.

Dutcher’s next call was to Steve Fisher, who was on vacation at his Florida condo. Fisher hung up and called his Tulane counterpart, Ed Conroy.

Fisher told Conroy that, in all honesty, he doesn’t much care for the NCAA’s policy allowing fifth-year transfers to play immediately if they have graduated.

“I don’t think any coach in America said, ‘Wow, that’s a great rule,’ but all of us, since it’s there, explore it,” Fisher says. “I told him: ‘We are going to recruit Josh and I hope you understand. I feel for you and your situation. He’s too good a player for you to want him to leave. But we feel he’s going to leave and we’re jumping into the mix. I wanted you to know that from me.’

The next step was meeting with Davis and his mother, but not in that order. They flew to Raleigh – Dutcher from San Diego, Fisher from Florida – and met Veronica Davis, who had raised Josh and his older brother without their father.

They had common ground. She had a master’s degree in math and statistics from North Carolina State, and had taught math for years. Fisher started as a math teacher at Rich East High in Park Forest, Ill.

“Coach Fisher and Coach Dutcher, out of all the coaches who talked to me, they seemed to be the most sincere,” she says. “I really enjoyed talking with them. Usually, they just go to the player. They came here first. That was special.”

They left and she called her son.

“At the time I was confused because there were so many schools,” Davis says. “I was like, ‘Mom, I really don’t know what to do.’ She said: ‘I’m going to let you meet them. But honestly, I think you’re going to end up at San Diego State.’”

Fisher and Dutcher caught an early-morning flight to New Orleans and met Davis. A few weeks later, Davis took an official visit to SDSU and orally committed in the airport before his return flight – and before planned trips to Gonzaga and Ohio State. And barely a month after Dutcher first called him.

“A lot of people, I guess they look at my stats and they don’t really think about my family,” Davis says. “The first thing they thought about was my mom. Anybody who thinks about my mom first, that’s a plus in my book.”